When Vincent Zhou and Anthony Ponomarenko arrived in Colorado Springs, Colorado, last spring, they were both struggling.
Zhou had returned to his training base at the Broadmoor World Arena following a devastating experience at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, where he tested positive for COVID-19 and had to withdraw from the men's individual event.
He had just four weeks before the ISU Figure Skating World Championships but hadn't trained for two weeks in Beijing and was dealing with the mental fallout of having his Olympic dream go up in smoke.
"I just felt like I had lost all motivation," Zhou said. "I felt so empty. Some days, even just looking at my skates was so painful, I couldn't approach my skating bag or want to go to the rink. When I did go to the rink, there was just no motivation. I could not get myself off the ice. I couldn't jump. I couldn't get myself through a run-through."
Ponomarenko, meanwhile, had just finished what he describes as a disappointing season with ice dance partner Christina Carreira. The week after the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships 2022, he was on the surgery table for his ankle, and he went to Colorado Springs for recovery and rehab.
"It was a pretty difficult time for me personally, just because I didn't have a great season, in my opinion, at least," Ponomarenko said. "So it was rough. And I was in Colorado Springs away from family and friends, so it was a lot. I wasn't in a good place."
The two old friends, who grew up skating at the same rink in the Bay Area in California, found solace in each other during their difficult times.
"Just having another person, even to just watch a simple movie with, or get ice cream or In-N-Out – looking back, that was everything to me because I felt so isolated and alone recovering, and I also felt so handicapped," Ponomarenko said. "I wasn't able to take care of myself fully. So having Vincent there just to hang out with me and watch a movie, that was everything."
Zhou, the Colorado resident, took the lead, driving the two of them around to see the local landmarks. One of their stops was the Manitou Incline, a local legend of a hike that climbs more than 2,000 vertical feet in less than a mile up a mountain.
"And we stood at the foot of the incline, me with a heavy heart and him with crutches and a boot on one foot, and looked up at the top," Zhou said. "And he was like, 'We're going to climb that together when you and I are out of this, when I'm healthy again and you've made it through. We're going to do this.' And from that point on, it was sealed. We had to go back and make good on that pact."
"The Incline seemed like a physical manifestation of what the journey out of our situation seemed like. Just like straight up the side of a mountain. Looks impossible. You're driving towards it, and you just see a line going up the side of a mountain. You stand at the foot and it just goes up and up. So it was also metaphorical for us."
The two would go their separate ways after their time in Colorado Springs. Zhou won bronze at the 2022 World Championships before taking a sabbatical from skating to attend Brown University full time, while Ponomarenko returned to the ice with Carreira, winning bronze at the 2023 U.S. Championships and making their World Championship debut in 2023.
After the skating season ended, Ponomarenko called Zhou, and they reunited in Colorado Springs in late May to make good on their pact and tackle the Incline.
"It was extremely difficult," Ponomarenko said, laughing. "I remember, I think more than halfway through, I had to sit down, and I was like, 'Vincent, I need like a 10-minute break.' And he was like, 'Don't sit for too long because your legs will seize up and you won't be able to finish it.'"
"In the moment, I was just thinking, when Anthony and I were down in the dumps a year ago, we just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and if we stopped fighting for a moment, it felt like we would slip back, all the way down to the bottom again," Zhou added. "And I was thinking to myself, 'There's no way I'm letting that happen. We are not letting ourselves do the whole one step forward, three steps back sort of thing.' So we kind of pushed each other to keep going."
They agree that the easiest part of the climb was the last 10 steps, which they took at a run, finishing together.
"What was going through my mind was all of the incredibly difficult moments that I had leading up to this," Ponomarenko said. "I had ups and downs, and that was all kind of flashing through my mind, and the days where I thought, 'Oh, I don't think I can continue anymore' – they were showing up in my mind. But being at the top, seeing Colorado Springs down below, it was almost a moment of Zen where I could finally close the chapter, this dark period of my life."
"It felt similar to standing on a podium at a major competition," Zhou said. "All the days of training and difficult long nights, no sleep, and injuries and setbacks and whatever, just replaying in your head as you stand on the podium. And looking out across the arena, looking over Colorado Springs, it felt similar."
Both Zhou and Ponomarenko are doing well now, both of their lives full and happy, their struggles and dark times far behind them. While they put a bow on their struggles with a climb up the Incline, they know how tenuous mental health can be and encourage anyone struggling like they were to reach out and ask for help.
"A lot of us go through things, and it's easy to start comparing yourself to other people, like, 'Oh, this other person's struggles are worse than mine. Why am I even struggling with this?'" Zhou said. "But I want to get the message out there that the struggles that you face are completely valid, and individual experiences are different. What's hard for one person may not be hard for another person, and what's easy for someone may be extremely difficult for someone else, and that's fine. In the grand scheme of your journey as an individual, every experience is something you can learn from and grow from, even if it's negative.
Especially if it's negative. It's important to fill that time with meaningful undertakings so that you can look back and, instead of that time feeling like a void in your life, instead it feels like a period of growth and a period of new beginnings. And I think Anthony and I, filling that time with a meaningful undertaking such as vowing to complete this metaphorical journey up the Incline, that allows us to look back and say, 'Yes, those were extremely dark times, but during those times, something good came out of it.'
"You're never truly alone. Seek help. Talk to someone. But if you feel like you have nobody to talk to, DM me on Instagram. I want to read your story. I want to hear all about it. You can tell me. There's no judgment, because I know what it's like to have nobody to talk to, to feel like I'm screaming at a blank wall in the middle of a cell with nobody to hear me, and it's one of the worst feelings in the world. So if you have nobody to talk to, literally DM me on Instagram. I want to hear your story."
